Van Viet Truong was a quiet hero.
The 60-year-old owner of Hồng Hưng Asian Grocery on Hampshire Road in Sunshine saw someone in trouble and acted. He rushed to help a neighbouring shopkeeper being confronted by teenagers trying to steal clothes. For his bravery, he was swarmed, severely beaten, and left with unsurvivable head injuries. He died on August 5, 2026.
His death is a tragedy. The community is grieving. Rallies have been held demanding tougher youth crime and bail laws. The conversation, as the media has framed it, is about juvenile justice, recidivism, and whether the system is failing.
But what if that conversation is a distraction?
What if the real fault lies not with the kids—troubled as they may be—but with an atmosphere of hate that has been systematically cultivated by political leaders, media outlets, and a foreign policy establishment desperate to sell Australia a war with China?
The Distraction
Let’s be clear: five youths aged 12 to 15 have been charged. Their identities are protected because they are minors. The reporting has focused on their age, the nature of the charges, and the decision to grant bail. One magistrate even cited a 14-year-old girl’s Aboriginal heritage in her bail determination.
But here’s the question nobody in the mainstream media is asking: why did this happen in the first place?
Not why did a group of teenagers commit a violent act—that question is for criminologists and social workers. The deeper question is: why does our society seem to be producing an environment where violence against Asian Australians is becoming more thinkable?
Because make no mistake—the Truong case did not happen in a vacuum.
The Atmosphere of Hate
For years, Australian media and political figures have been systematically cultivating a climate of fear and resentment towards Asia.
- One Nation has made a political career out of anti-Asian and anti-Muslim rhetoric. Pauline Hanson’s infamous “swamped by Asians” speech in 1996 was just the beginning. More recently, she has called for a “monocultural” Australia and railed against what she calls the “invasion” of Asian immigration.
- The Liberal-National Coalition has, particularly since 2017, adopted increasingly hawkish language towards China, framing the country as an existential threat.
- Labor has largely followed suit, competing to appear “tough on China” rather than offering a diplomatic alternative.
- The Murdoch media empire—through Sky News, The Australian, and its other platforms—has relentlessly pushed the “China threat” narrative, treating every diplomatic dispute as a prelude to war and every shipment of Chinese electric cars as an “invasion.”
The result? An entire generation of Australians has been raised on a diet of fear. And when fear is constantly directed at a particular group, it becomes normalised. It becomes acceptable to view people of Asian background not as neighbours, colleagues, and friends, but as representatives of a hostile power.
The 9/11 Warning
We have seen this play out before.
After September 11, 2001, the United States experienced a staggering surge in hate crimes against Muslim and South Asian Americans. People were attacked on the street. Mosques were firebombed. Sikhs—who are not even Muslim—were murdered because they wore turbans and were mistaken for “the enemy.”
The attacks were not spontaneous. They were the direct result of a media and political environment that dehumanised an entire group of people. When you tell a population that a particular group is the enemy, that they are a threat, that they are “coming for us,” some people will act on that incitement.
Australia is not immune to this dynamic.
The Identity Blurring: When Asian is “Asian Enough”
Here is one of the most revealing and dangerous aspects of this racism: the perpetrators rarely bother to distinguish between different Asian ethnicities.
A Vietnamese-Australian woman is attacked and told to “go back to China.” A Japanese tourist is murdered in Cairns because of resentment towards “the Japanese.” A Korean-Australian family is harassed because someone blamed them for “bringing the coronavirus.”
This is not a mistake. It is a feature, not a bug.
When you dehumanise an entire category of people—when you reduce millions of individuals from dozens of distinct cultures, languages, and nations to a single, undifferentiated mass called “Asian”—you are not making an error. You are revealing the nature of your hatred. It was never about China or Vietnam or Japan or Korea. It was always about them—the foreigner, the other, the enemy within.
This identity blurring is documented. During the COVID-19 pandemic, migrant historians noted that perpetrators frequently misidentified anyone of East or Southeast Asian appearance as mainland Chinese. Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, Filipino, Thai—all were treated as interchangeable targets for anti-China rhetoric. The specific nationality didn’t matter. The colour of their skin did. The shape of their eyes did. The language they spoke at home did.
Combined, people of Chinese and South-East Asian background make up approximately 10% to 11% of the total Australian population. Chinese ancestry alone accounts for 5.5%; South-East Asian ancestry accounts for 4.5%. These are not abstract statistics. These are families, neighbours, small business owners like Van Viet Truong.
If the rhetoric continues to escalate—if the media continues to beat the drum for war with China—what happens to these 10% of Australians? What happens to the Vietnamese-Australian grandmother who speaks with an accent? What happens to the Korean-Australian teenager wearing a face mask? What happens to the Japanese-Australian nurse who just wants to get home from her shift?
Do we imagine they will be safe?
Do we imagine that the same forces that attacked the Do sisters in Petersham in 2020—spitting at them, accusing them of bringing the coronavirus, threatening them with a knife—will somehow restrain themselves when the headlines are screaming about war?
They will not.
Because to the perpetrators, they are not Vietnamese or Chinese or Korean. They are “Asian.” And “Asian” is the enemy.
The Madness of Proxy War
This is where the madness becomes undeniable.
Australia is not at war with China. We are not about to be attacked. And despite what the alarmists claim, China has shown no intention of invading or attacking Australia.
But we are, through our media and our political class, being marched toward a conflict that serves nobody’s interests except the defence contractors who profit from it and the politicians who use fear to win elections.
What is the actual threat?
China has not invaded any country since 1979. It has not threatened Australia. It has not attacked a single Australian ship or aircraft. It has not cut off our trade, despite our political posturing. It has, in fact, continued to be our largest trading partner.
Meanwhile, the United States—which is now demanding that Australia align ever more closely with its strategy—has a history of abandoning allies. From the Kurds to the South Vietnamese to the Afghans, the US has shown that its interests come first. If a war with China were to break out, would the US really sacrifice American lives for Australian security?
Or would we be left, as Michael Wesley argues in his essay “Blind Spot,” dangerously exposed and alone, having alienated the very neighbours who could have been our allies?
The Human Cost
This is not an abstract geopolitical debate. This is about real people.
- It’s about the Vietnamese-Australian woman on a Sydney train in 2020 who was doused with a drink and told to “go back to your country” because she was wearing a face mask.
- It’s about the 19-year-old Vietnamese-Australian woman who was spat on, coughed at, kicked, and threatened with a knife by individuals shouting that her “people brought the virus over here.”
- It’s about Rosa and Sophie Do, sisters walking in Petersham, who were confronted by teenagers yelling racial slurs, accusing them of spreading the coronavirus, and threatening them with a knife. Their attackers didn’t ask if they were Vietnamese or Chinese. They didn’t care. They saw Asian faces and acted.
- It’s about Michiko Okuyama, a 22-year-old Japanese tourist who arrived in Cairns in 1997 and was murdered six days later by a 16-year-old local boy. At the time, locals spoke of an undercurrent of resentment towards Japanese tourists. The murder was called “the day Cairns changed.” Her killer didn’t need to know her name. He saw a Japanese face and acted.
- And now, it’s about Van Viet Truong, a 60-year-old man who died because he was trying to help someone.
These are not isolated incidents. They are the logical outcome of an environment in which Asian Australians are routinely dehumanised, blurred into a single category, blamed, and treated as representatives of a foreign enemy.
What We’re Not Talking About
While the media obsesses over bail laws and youth crime, we are not talking about:
- The 680 million Muslims of Southeast Asia who live in our region, with whom we have deep economic and cultural ties, and who do not share our enthusiasm for a new Cold War.
- The fact that Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei—three majority-Muslim nations right on our doorstep—are deeply uneasy with Washington’s efforts to isolate Beijing.
- The diplomatic alternatives that could secure our future without resorting to war.
- The economic interdependence that has kept our region stable for decades and which would be destroyed by conflict.
- The human cost of an Australian population that is being conditioned to view 10% of its own citizens as potential enemies—not as Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, Filipino, Japanese, or Chinese, but simply as “Asian,” a single undifferentiated mass to be feared.
The Real Question
So let’s return to the question posed by the headline:
Harsher sentencing for youth crime? Or are we looking in the wrong direction?
The answer is: we are looking in the wrong direction.
The fault lies not with the youths alone—though they must face justice. The fault lies with a media and political class that has systematically cultivated an atmosphere of fear, division, and hate. The fault lies with politicians who use Asian Australians as political footballs. The fault lies with a foreign policy establishment that has abandoned diplomacy in favour of militarism. The fault lies with a public that has allowed itself to be led by fear rather than reason.
Van Viet Truong died because five troubled teenagers committed a violent crime. That is the immediate cause. But the deeper cause—the environment in which such violence becomes thinkable—is the one we are not talking about.
And if we don’t start talking about it, more people will die.
A Note on Exploitation
Some will read this and say I am exploiting a tragedy for political ends.
I understand that accusation. I have wrestled with it myself. I am not arguing that Van Viet Truong was murdered because of Australia’s foreign policy. He was murdered by five youths who committed a violent crime. That is the immediate and undeniable fact.
But I am asking: why did that crime happen in a society that has spent years dehumanising people who look like him? Why did his attackers not see a neighbour, a shopkeeper, a man trying to help someone—why did they see something else? And why are we so quick to blame the kids while ignoring the environment that made such violence more thinkable?
I am asking these questions because I believe that silence is not neutrality—it is complicity.
When the media beats the drum for war, when politicians dehumanise entire communities, when 10% of our population is made to feel like enemies in their own country, silence is not an option.
If asking hard questions about the world we live in is “political,” then so be it. But I would rather be accused of having an agenda than be silent while the agenda is set by others.
A Call to Action
We cannot allow the media to continue selling us a war nobody wants while ignoring the real threats to our security: division, hate, and the erosion of our social fabric.
We cannot allow 10% of our population to be turned into scapegoats for the failures of our political class.
We cannot allow the memory of Van Viet Truong—a man who died trying to help someone—to be exploited for a political agenda that has nothing to do with justice.
The question is not whether we are prosecuting youths harshly enough. The question is: what kind of society do we want to be?
Do we want to be a society that fears its neighbours, that dehumanises its own citizens, and that marches blindly toward a war that serves nobody’s interests?
Or do we want to be a society that values its diversity, that engages with its region diplomatically, and that protects all of its citizens—regardless of their background or where their ancestors came from?
If we choose the latter, then it’s time to stop blaming the kids and start looking at the people who are really responsible.
Van Viet Truong, 1966–2026. He saw someone in trouble and acted. He deserved better. We all do.
About the Author
George Adams is the founder and editor of Hanoi Trading Post. He writes on Asia-Pacific affairs, culture, history, and regional public policy, drawing on more than five decades of professional and personal experience across Australia, Papua New Guinea, the Pacific, and Southeast Asia.
References & Further Reading
Australian Human Rights Commission – Anti-Asian Racism Research Project
Australian Human Rights Commission – National Anti-Racism Framework
Australian Bureau of Statistics – 2021 Census Data
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade – Australia–China Trade and Economic Facts
La Trobe University Press – Blind Spot: Australia, the United States and Our Strategic Future by Michael Wesley
ABC News – Pauline Hanson’s 1996 “Swamped by Asians” Speech: 20 Years On
Editorial Note: The views expressed in this opinion article are those of the author and are intended to encourage informed public discussion. Readers may agree or disagree with the conclusions reached, but respectful debate is welcomed. The Hanoi Trading Post supports open dialogue conducted with civility and respect.
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